The Island
by PlanetOfTheWeepingWillow
Summary: Arthur Kirkland decides to go alone on a mission to see the strange, barbaric people of an island just off of Europe. There he discovers a culture that does not know what the meaning of "hate", "love", (or "soap") is and that he may not know it himself.


The pocket-watch dangled from dirty hands. It swung, already streaked with dust, before almond-shaped eyes. Nails with years of grime caked beneath the hard white crescent picked at it. One hand tried to pry it open from the back. They fumbled until finally the largest hand of them all took the watch and cupped it. The man holding it leaned forwards to the watch's owner. The owner grinned and took it with a shy nod of his head that, in the language of the Greblikovs meant "thank you". The Greblikovs, much resembling Apes, gazed at the man before him. Of this group there were three, two smaller ones and a larger one, the leader of this particular tribe. They each had a bush of kinky black hair and gray skin which may have been a different color beneath the layer of earth. They were skins of animals they hunted. Some sported the shoes the strange man had brought over.

Each gorilla-like man had an equally gorilla-like woman near them. The children seemed closest to human of the bunch. They wore minimal clothing and growled playfully. Boys and girls were equal until they reached adulthood which, in their brief life span, was anywhere between twelve and fourteen.

The biggest asked the new man's name. The new man, having studied their barbaric tongue, replied "Arthur Kirkland". The big man repeated the name in confusion. He couldn't master the plainness of English and the scarce intonation. He tried it again and Arthur told him to settle with "Arthur". The big man nodded, relieved not to trouble with family names. They meant nothing to him anyway.

Arthur still gazed in wonderment at how these men walked upright. One glance at their stocky and heavy build suggested they may have to bend over and push on the ground with their knuckles, but instead their beefy arms swung at their sides like two great clubs. Arthur felt a desire to mimic. He decided it would be quite rude.

In their small country, an isolated island off the coast of Iceland, Arthur was the barbarian. He wore clothing made of cotton and silk, something new and bizarre, and he did not eat meat often. The leader of the tribe, khan, as he was called, similar to another language far from the island, invited Arthur to feast with them. Arthur plucked up his pen and scribbled on a notepad he kept in his beige pocket.

_They have proven to be friendly. They did not fight instead they seemed fascinated. What a remarkable discovery! _

They seated Arthur on the floor. His rear felt itchy against the coarse wood they had placed as a make-shift "seating area". Before them was a table of the similar material. A woman was on the other side of the hut which belonged to khan. Her hair was long and just as tightly woven as the males'. The only difference was a slight distinction in cleanliness. Arthur could see the yellowish tinge painting coarse skin. She may have been no older than seventeen. The man could not have been older than nineteen, but a full beard spilled from his chin, hiding his broad ears.

"Welcome!" He said to Arthur, spreading his arms out broadly.

"Thank you." Arthur said, grinning. He was a spot of white on a dark cloth. His hair was a flaxen color and his eyes, which mystified most of the tribe, were greener than anything they had ever seen.

_The good behavior can be caused by the good weather. It is summer now. I imagine in winter they may be bitter. They eat crops as often as we eat deer. But animals may be difficult to fine. No hint of storage space is apparent in any home I have seen thus far. I have seen two: one consisted of an "elderly" woman—mark that she may have been in her thirties at most—and the khan's home which is no more decorated than an old garage for rusted cars. Now they place the food before me and we dine with our fingers, repulsive to me, but to them a rarity: meaning that many from hunting have lost a good deal of appendages. The only weapon they have is a rudimentary spear and their bodies. I believe the lack of technology is not due to a lack of intelligence but rather an abundance of culture and customs. _

A man, the nicest of the lot, set the food down, held by a cloth. Arthur nearly fainted. His head swam as he gazed at the bloody, half-cooked animal before him. When he ate meat it was neat slices cooked fully until they were charred topped with herbs. Here it was only the animal, with organs intact. Arthur's lips parted in disgust. The other howled with laughter.

"The other man did the same!" khan said in the Greblikovs' rough, but rather charming tongue. "He fell asleep. We had to have the woman care for him."

"Oh is that so?" Arthur was the second, and last, person to venture into the dismal island.

"Yes. When he awoke he said he had not seen such meat before. You strange new people must be as weak as a newborn. No, weaker, for the newborn's first full meal after his mother's breast milk is the blood of the recently killed animal. Sometimes if they are lucky it is a fox."

Arthur had trouble understanding his language at times. Their language was not totally unlike the Nordic and Slavic tongues surrounding them, but it was so entangled with the throat that Arthur wondered the difference between a cough and an article.

"Y-yes," Arthur nodded vaguely. The others, a cast of members from the tribe who stood higher in society simply because they were more efficient reached over with dirt-smeared hands and grabbed the flesh they found the best. Arthur found the most cooked, the leg, and took that. He set it in his hand, uncomfortable without a plate, and cursed these rugged barbarians for their unhygienic eating habits. He ate anyway and was confronted by what he had heard often addressed as "a gamey flavor".

That night under the shelter of stars Arthur's stomach revolted to the new introduction of such raw meat and dirt. He deposited his body's rejections into the forest, as he was told to do, and then he buried it. All the while he felt much like a cat. He wondered how Mr. Taffy, his rather obese Persian, was doing at home.

_Food is atrocious. I may as well shovel up dust and eat that. I wonder how I shall survive this week on canteens and cans. Antony, when you read these notes and place them in the article please remind me never to take on an expedition alone. Furthermore the lack of music here is disorienting. In most tribes, in fact in nearly all, there is some sort of music. There are drums or wind instruments or singing, even, but this land is vacant of sound. It is a fat they have removed because they believed it to be excess. They have no art, no poetry, and nothing but their language. They don't have any way of recording history: not through art or story or writing. How peculiar! _

The following morning no one awoke until dawn had fully melted into day. Arthur was the first awake.

"You do not sleep?" a woman asked him. She was the khan's female companion, as they had no notion of family bonds.

"No, I sleep little." Arthur said with a laugh.

The woman grimaced at the sound, as if she had rarely heard it, but something like a smile crept on to her lips. "Strange man, then you must help me find the water."

The woman went off without waiting for Arthur. Arthur staggered to his feet and raced after her. She was quick and sturdy. Her feet were bare and she made no sound as she moved. At the edge of their "camp" she picked up a wooden basin of water.

"Ah, so they do have some sort of equipment other than that spear I saw first…" Arthur said aloud, in English. The woman didn't turn to look at him, she hardly noticed. Arthur picked up another basin and received a splinter from it. Nonetheless he walked on. The woman led him to a clear, rushing spring. She bent down and pooled water into her basin. Arthur did the same. She waited for him to fill his before walking back. Near one of the homes there was a larger basin.

"We Greblikovs," she said, "like to keep water here for the entire place to drink. We are a family if not by blood." She dumped the water from her basin into the nearly empty bigger one. Arthur did the same. "We care for all."

They repeated the course until Arthur was sure he had blisters and the basin was filled up.

"May I ask questions of you?" the woman asked. "I am…" She gave him a long, complicated name he could not follow. She noticed his loss and seemed amused by it. "Call me khana, as in the khan's woman."

Arthur nodded. "Ask away."

"Let us first go to the stream."

Arthur wrote in his notepad while they marched. She remained silent.

_Women are treated much the same here as in the rest of the world. However, unlike how many seem to abuse them, they are mostly ignored here. I cannot tell which is worse of the two, but neither can be good._

The woman sat down on the grass. Arthur leaned against a long, curved white rock. It surface was smooth and comfortably cool. Next to it were four other similarly shaped ones, the last two being slightly smaller.

_Even the rocks here are curious!_

"I have heard much about your world. I was younger, a child, when the first man came. He taught me some of your words such as '_femme'_, '_grand', 'bien', _and _'chanson_'. The last he said means to make some sort of sound. I did not understand. Do you know?"

"Oh, that's in a language we call French." Arthur said. He had a strange feeling he knew who had been here before him. What a dirty frog! He wanted to be the first to visit the island. Arthur cleared his features of any discomfort. Where the Greblikovs lacked in art they were superior in reading emotion. "But in English, what I speak at home, we call it _song_ and _music_ which is a form of _art_."

"I do not understand. Your world is strange. It may be a different star. You see the stars? They are overheard. The strange man said they are from different worlds. I asked if he thought there may be others as different as the Greblikovs and you strange people. He said it is possible."

_They have very little understanding in astronomy._

"Yes, it very well could be. The stars, like the sun," Arthur pointed upwards at the sun, beating down on them in a frosty way northern countries always provided. He found it progressively more difficult to describe himself, although he prided himself on being a polyglot. "They emit light."

"Yes, we understand light." She said quickly. She launched into a fairly accurate description of how light works and the different "waves" they appeared in and how through a prism white light is broken into various colors.

"How do you know that?" Arthur said. He had a feeling he was speaking to a genius. She said nothing. "Well, I suppose you figured it out. I was wrong to undermine your intelligence." She continued her silence. Arthur grew uncomfortable. He reached behind him and felt the rock. He glided his hand across the smooth surface. He wondered what gem would be inside.

Khana breathed heavily, her chest rising. She spread her legs out and stretched. The rest of their tribe was waking. Several men gathered their spears, along with children learning, and went to hunt. The skies hinted a clear day. A few members walked to the basin and cupped their hands, sipping gratefully. Khana gazed at them, a hint of pride lingering in her deep, black eyes.

Arthur scratched his neck. His hair was already beginning to smell foul. There was a smell about the Greblikovs, but it wasn't the same stench as he had. Theirs was a sort of musk, a perfume that was alarming and soothing; natural. Arthur made a note about it.

"Do you know what the word _'amour_' means? I remember the strange man saying that and _'j'aime_' to several things. He never explained what it meant."

At a loss for words, Arthur gaped. Finally he shook his head slowly. "It means…" there was no word for "love" in their language. "It means to have a very strong feeling for something that makes you happy."

"Do you have a word for strong feelings that make you angry and sad?"

"Yes, _hate_."

Khana stared. She appeared neither to understand nor not understand.

Arthur felt uncomfortable under her gaze. He continued to examine the stones behind him. "Say, do you have a name for these rocks?"

"Yes, 'bones'."

"What?" Arthur said, in English from surprise. It was possible that the word was a homophone and that they simply shared a similar title. Something twitched in Arthur's stomach.

"Bones."

"You mean the bones inside of us?" Arthur pointed to his ribs. He took another glance at the rocks. They did seem to match the formation of ribs, tapering off in size.

"Yes."

The rest of the bones must have been withered by time. Arthur turned and looked to where the rest of the ribs should be, if his anatomy was correct, and he found large rocks broken, so their insides were a visible cobweb of yellow marrow. Arthur leaped up in horror. His heart raced. Firstly it sickened him to see such bones, or anything of an animal. Secondly what in the world could have been so large? His troubles were quieted when he was called to do some errands. In the afternoon, before supper, he decided to explore the land.

He picked his way through the sparse, unkind landscape, _like the sterile womb of a woman who could not have children._ He paused. Why had that comparison appeared in his head? He looked at his notes. There, in his elegant hand, where those strange, almost vulgar words. Antony would surely omit it. Then again, they had a certain ring to them… Arthur swept the landscape with his eyes. The land was mostly flat, aside from the tight knot of forest on one side and the rising slopes further north. He could see the thin blue line of the ocean. Now, more than when he first sailed there, he could see the white bones break through the earth like teeth biting into meat. They may have belonged to a prehistoric beats, but something in Arthur's head firmly shook its head no at the notion. The bones were very certainly mammalian. Arthur decided not to note it until he received an answer from the Greblikovs.

Arthur didn't get very far before he decided to return to the tribe. He ate the meat out of sheer politeness. Later he would, in his tent, eat the canned beans he was provided by his crew. They were off inspecting a volcano, checking to see if it really was dormant. Arthur belonged proudly to an expedition crew. The leader was Amy Ro, a loud, brilliant, mad woman with a long brown pony-tail who did not hesitate for a moment when choosing Arthur to join her team. She was highly picky about whom she hired, but once she laid eyes on Arthur his fate was sealed, the envelope licked, and a stamp pounded on to the front. Arthur wondered what Amy was doing now. He had a radio transmission device in case of an emergency. They would swoop by fast enough, meaning a day, and Arthur wondered if he really was hurt he could survive. Surely the Greblikovs must have some sort of grasp on medical sciences. He had yet to see one moaning in pain. Arthur decided that to be the case.

At supper, Arthur had no chance to speak. Unlike the Greblikovs' neighbors to the east, they thought eating time was not meant to be interrupted by chatter. He had to wait until afterwards to spring a question. He was disappointed to find that everyone departed quickly, falling asleep. No one remained awake aside from a little girl, terrified of Arthur, who was punished to clean up the remains before bed.

The following morning Arthur went on another expedition around the tribe. On his walk he found a group of them chasing a thin, brown creature. It began to slow with exhaustion. The khan planted it with a spear and the lugged it over their backs. Each movement was precise and calculated. Arthur eagerly penned it down. His notepad was steadily becoming fuller and fuller. He had no room for excess information. He barely wrote adjectives unless he needed them. Perhaps the culture was rubbing off on him. Anything too much was unneeded. They ate once a day, at night, aside from a small snack in the morning of a sort of burned root, because they ate so much they needed no more. Arthur was constantly hungry, but he didn't dare mention it.

When he returned to the tribe the women and children were working on sewing a piece of clothing for winter. Khana invited him to sit down. He did so and picked up a cloth and the thick needle fashioned out of metal. His fingers worked steadily. He had been a surgeon up until the moment he nearly fell apart and decided to join the crew. If trouble arose he could operate on himself, but he didn't have his old equipment or strength.

Khana was shocked. "You strange men can make clothing?"

"No, not all of us. But I have been trained to sew." He searched for the right words, "And my mother taught me how to." _Mother_ was a word they understood well.

Khana nodded at the boys sitting around jabbing needles into tiny cloths. They were making bags. Arthur judged that they were very poor at being bags under their hands. "They only begin to learn to sew when they are taught to hunt, then they forget. The bigger girls are also taught to hunt and they forget too. Only the small boys who cannot grow a beard or hunt well remain." She directed her eyes on a feminine beauty, a young boy who worked hard on making boots for the upcoming winter. His black hair fell in tangles over his smooth eyes. His lips were pale and, surprisingly, clean. He worked hard, his slender fingers pulling needles through.

"I was once big enough to hunt. Khan was my mentor. He is a year older than me so he has a little more experience." Years they understood too. Arthur put a note down, writing at his side. He set the pen back in his pocket and tucked the notepad into his lap. "But I hurt my leg. I almost went there but I was healed. They said I had magic powers."

"Where is 'there'?" Arthur asked, raising his thick brows which were no longer out of place.

"There is where we put the sick." She said simply.

Arthur felt nauseous. He recalled the bones jutting from the ground. "What do those bones belong to?"

The young man answered Arthur. "The bones belong to the Night."

"You mean the night that comes after day?"

"Yes." He missed Arthur's joke.

"But they are just bones."

"Some still live. When they die they become the bones. At night they walk and hunt. They pick up trees and eat them."

Arthur nodded slowly. He didn't recall any sort of creature when he stayed up emptying his bowels of raw meat.

_The people do have one form of "art": Superstition. They claim magic and a beast called "Night" that feasts on trees in the nighttime. Evidence of this is suggested by large bones jutting from the earth, akin to stones. However they appear recent, but they may be the fossils of a marine animal, although mammalian in appearance. _

The rest of the day continued as usual, as did the following. He made no further discoveries. At night he periodically woke to the sounds of snapping branches. When he shot awake and stared at the forest he saw nothing large enough to make those bones. He relaxed, as much as a paranoid professor-like man could in the middle of an island that had nearly no attributes of an island, aside from a slim beach.

On the final day Arthur woke to find Khana bending over him. He nearly screamed in shock but she placed a heavy, washed hand on his mouth. "Come."

Arthur stood, attempting to brush his hair back. It stood like a porcupine's agitated quills. He recalled that no one cared and left it at that. Still sleepy, he grabbed his notepad and pen. He followed her through the early morning. The sun had yet to make it halfway up the horizon. The hemisphere waited, like a prying eye. Khana moved quickly with a slight limp Arthur hadn't noticed before. They wove through a series of trees and homes until finally they entered a tundra-like landscape. Prickly brushes decorated the dusty ground, raising their sharp leaves. Khana stepped on them. Arthur tried not to yell out in pain.

After what seemed to be a hundred years of half-awake running, Khana came to a full stop. The first thing Arthur noticed was the smell. He scowled. Khana bent her head and raised a hand to point, extending all her fingers. In a ditch, deep enough to be a well and large enough in diameter to host several men shoulder-to-shoulder, a low, pitiful grown escaped. Arthur had yet to see a dead Greblikov. And here was an entire host of them. Arthur peered in.

The man who had been stitching the day before lay inside, amid a pile of rotted, bloated corpses and bones. His eyes were bleeding. He held his hands to his face and wept miserably. One other man seemed barely alive, probably injured in a hunt. He twitched and grunted, waiting for death like a gentleman waiting for his train. "What happened to him?" Arthur asked.

"We are not sure. He woke with his eyes gone. The men and khan take him here." Khana explained. "When we are ready to go to the other world we are thrown here, so we do not bother the living and bring sickness."

"Why are you showing me this?" Arthur asked.

"I did not show the first strange man." Khana responded quickly. She showed no signs of wanting to continue.

"Thank you." Arthur said.

They remained silent.

Khana looked at him intently. There was an odd, disjointed beauty about her. He wondered if she was brought up back in London, dressed, cleaned, and groomed properly, would she look like a lady. Moreover, would she look charming? He had a sudden burst of fantasy. He would have his own little Pygmalion! He could sculpt her into a refined beauty and have her for himself. Then an image of her startled to death by the strange sounds of ruckus of his world silenced the fantasies. She would never adapt and she did not need to. Yet he could not kept staring at her round, dirty, hard face with pale lips and, under the skins, full breasts and shape of lean, muscular body. Her teeth were relatively sound, but he had no right to complain.

"I asked you some time ago what _'amour'_ means."

"Yes, you did." Arthur nodded.

"I think I understand now."

"Is that so?"

"I have strong feelings for you that make me sick but also make me happy." She gazed at the ditch as if she wanted to throw herself in. Instead she turned and started to walk back. Arthur followed.

"Love, is it?"

"Maybe it is."

"In our world—I mean, country—we always make these feelings so big and we pretend they are magical. I think they aren't so." Arthur prattled on. He stopped when Khana rounded on him. She reached over and took his hand.

"Go on."

Arthur swallowed back a strange feeling of emotion. He felt her coarse hands gripping his. "Well, two people do not live together nor have children until they are in love, most of the time. Sometimes there are other reasons. But we usually try to tell people not to come together until they are in love."

"We do not do it here. Babies must be born to survive."

_The very rawest instinct is the main role of these people: to reproduce and survive. They are not troubled by the hassle of our lives. Is this good? Bad? _

"We do not trouble with this 'love'. But I feel this for you. What does it mean?"

Arthur felt his cheeks burn.

"You are red."

"Yes, I know." Arthur blushed harder. Her hand still squeezed his.

"How can I get rid of this feeling? It does not belong."

For the majority of their dialogue Arthur had imagined a school girl admitting a crush on her fellow school boy. Now that image shattered, as though a shoe had been thrown into its frail glasswork. The shards rain downed, scattered, and he could see without the obstruction of glass. She did not tell him this feeling to get somewhere with Arthur, as he euphemized it, but rather she was in pain. She did not know this feeling and she wanted to dispel it. Obviously the only choice was to ask the man who knew it best.

"Sometimes we touch lips." Arthur suggested.

"Kiss?" Arthur did not know the word before, but know the language seemed to translate itself. Arthur nodded. Khana looked at him.

"Sometimes we touch our bodies… You know what that is."

"To make children?"

"Y-yes, oh I feel like I'm talking to a child!" Arthur cried out. Khana didn't change her expression.

"I do not want your child." She said. "I will kiss you instead." She reached up and placed her dusty lips on his, briefly, and withdrew. Arthur's lips parted. Both stared at each other. She let go of his hand. "That did not make the feeling better. Is that why the other stranger used such a strong word to describe the feeling?"

_And yet the feelings such as love and hatred arise anyway. Is it better to embrace them?_

Arthur nodded. He didn't quite know what was happening anymore. He was conscious of a dim flow of events, as if time had melted into a stream that he drifted along sleepily. Soon he was saying goodbye and swept into embraces unlike anything he had known. He gave Khana a swift glance. She seemed uncertain what to do. She gave him the same glimmer of a smile. Arthur, with his things packed, looked back as he walked away. He had hoped for a poetic ending to his travels where he did not look back. In his mind he pictured Khana rushing to him. She grabbed his arms and pulled him into another kiss while begging to accompany him. He imagined then that the memory was a glass bottle. He shattered it over a rock with the luxury of relief washing over him. The tribe turned away. No one came to him.

He entered the boat alone.

Amy Ro greeted him first. She embraced him tightly. "How was it?" She asked. Her hair was cut short. Arthur smiled.

"It gave me plenty to think about."

"Come, let's talk it out. They have some nice tea here." Amy led him into the ship's insides where she set a kettle on a tiny stove. Arthur grinned under the sound of his home. Finally he would not have to eat meat again. Little did he know in a year's time he would crave it once more. Over tea, Arthur described the events, occasionally checking his notepad for facts. He wrote down the ditch of the dead, as he called it. Amy listened patiently.

Despite the fact that she was impatient on travels and answers, she loved to hear stories and would sit endlessly listening. She took a sip of her tea. He admired her cleanliness, her trimmed nails, her lean build, and her hair which did not smell musty.

"Do you think it's better that way?" she asked. "You don't have to stress about morals or ethics, you just have life to live. I think it's smarter, in a way."

"Yes, I think there is no clear cut answer either." Arthur nodded.

"Did you ever figure out what those Night things are?" Amy asked. When she was the one speaking she was not quite so patient.

Arthur shook his head. "I still think they are myths to explain the bones, probably a fossil, and to keep children in bed at night."

"You said they had no stories or art."

"I did say that." Arthur affirmed, "I also believe that their stories take on a different form… It's not a coherent character on journey thing, but rather a memory. Does that make sense? You don't read a novel and find a plot and arch and all that. Rather you discover these detached images and shapes floating in your mind, moving."

Amy munched on a biscuit, nodding slowly. "You should write a book when you get back. It would make an interesting piece of literature. You have the literary merit. I'll give you paid leave, too. Who knows, these discoveries might gain us some respect in the scientific world. We'll show those bastards that we aren't just a group of wandering tourists! Also," she leaned in with a leer, "we may put some money in our pockets as a reward!" She burst into hoarse laughter.

"Yes, we might." Arthur nodded. Already lines and phrases were flying through his mind. His novel's skeleton was being built. Each cell began to split and build the inner marrow. Antony, who walked in to take his notes and give him a brief hello, would take care of the scientific articles. Now, a novel is where one really learns.

Arthur always had trouble with the concluding part of science. He liked to gather and learn, but he couldn't make an experiment for himself. He had to have the structure laid out. Then he could gather data and someone had to compile it into a fluid answer. Novels, his only friends in his school days, were his area of expertise. His love of science and of language blended together in a way causing him to scrutinize his luck.

When he returned he took his vacation to write in his tiny home just above a bakery. The aromas drifted through into his room one rainy evening. The scent of fresh loaves and rain mingled, causing Arthur's well of creative writing to overflow with ideas. First, he wrote a letter to an old French friend. It was long, tedious, and purposefully so. As a writer Arthur knew how to condense his writing into a paragraph if he needed to, but let the Frenchman stay up reading. Arthur asked him about his journeys and why he insisted on taking that expedition first and not write anything about it. He sent it off and, picking up his favorite pen and a sheaf of papers, he began his novel.

The same day the scientific article took the world by storm, Arthur received a reply from Francis Bonnefoy, all the way from Paris. In elegant, thin handwriting it said:

_She asked you what "amour" meant and you replied that it is a strong feeling of happiness towards something, correct? Well, you are wrong. It is an obsession, a beautiful, dangerous, deadly obsession that leads both of us to devour the world's knowledge. It led me there. I only wanted to learn. I did not need to show the rest of the world what I found out: you did. You were never shy about showing the world your view. I'm allergic to criticism. That's the honest answer._

_And one other thing, my dear English friend: the bones are not fossils and neither are the people. _

* * *

_I do not own Hetalia._

_As far as I know, the name I gave to the people of the island means nothing. It is a name I conjured up of a slightly Slavic sound, as that is where the island is near. If the word does mean something I'm curious to know; please do inform me. _

_Thank you for reading! I wouldn't mind a review or two...! _


End file.
